


you’ll find many ways to say i love you

by goingmywaydoll



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Growth, Fluff, M/M, Wedding Planning, Weddings, and, baby photos, but also some Big Conversations about the Past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-01 20:49:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19185286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goingmywaydoll/pseuds/goingmywaydoll
Summary: Budget spreadsheets, baby photos, wine tastings, and other things that happen on a Sunday.





	you’ll find many ways to say i love you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Itty_Bitty_Blondie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itty_Bitty_Blondie/gifts).



> i had a whole list of thank you's written here but then realized these are supposed to stay anonymous for a week, so for now, all i can say is that i'm extremely thankful for my beta and for everyone that dealt with my 2am freakouts over inspiration for this fic. i love and appreciate you all deeply <3

David rolls over in their bed, blinking Patrick into focus, screwing his face into a grimace in the light streaming through the curtains.

“Good morning.” Patrick’s voice is just above a whisper as he throws a hand over David’s torso, pulling him close and nudging his nose into his cheek before brushing a kiss across his lips and letting his eyes fall shut again, head falling back to the pillow.

Sunday mornings are like this, all false starts and lazy kisses when they don’t have anywhere to be. David wakes up two more times, blearily looking at a still sleeping Patrick before letting himself sink back into the pillow. Eventually, Patrick will kiss him properly and his eyes will stay open, except he’ll press one last kiss to David’s temple, untangle their limbs, and pad across the apartment for coffee.

Today, they don’t have to be anywhere but a cake tasting at three and a wine tasting at five and still, Patrick gets out of bed like it’s a weekday and he has anywhere else to be but David’s arms. David throws his arm across the bed, running his hand across the still-warm sheets before reaching for his phone and flopping back into the pillows, loud enough for Patrick to hear. Patrick glances over his shoulder, sending David an exasperated look that he knows is anything but genuine.

He has sixteen unread texts, twelve of which are from Alexis asking about flower arrangements. One is from Stevie asking again if she can come to the wine tasting and there, at the top of his unread messages, sent at seven thirty in the morning on a Sunday, is a text from Patrick’s mom.

It isn’t wholly unusual; she’s so excited about the wedding that she’s sending him ideas at least once a week, and every time his phone buzzes with the notification, something warm settles in his chest when he sees the sender.

David thinks texting him about the wedding must feel safer for her than texting Patrick; he remembers two years ago sitting cross-legged on Patrick’s bed at Ray’s and listening to Patrick tell him about how miserable wedding planning had made him, running his fingers along his calluses from baseball and stumbling over his words as he told him about Rachel.

It makes a strange sort of sense in David’s mind that it hasn’t yet sunk in for Marcy that Patrick _could_ be excited about wedding planning. They haven’t seen them since before the engagement and David wants to tell Patrick to tell his mom everything he tells David; he wants Marcy to see the way Patrick gets excited about caterers and reception playlists, and he wants her to see his neatly organized folder of wedding spreadsheets, the color-coded budget he painstakingly made two days after he proposed.

He loves that budget. He had woken up to Patrick sitting in bed on his laptop with a calculator resting in his lap. David had nuzzled into his neck, murmuring at him to put away the work. Patrick had kissed him slow and soft, but he hadn’t put away his computer. When he’d pulled away, brushing his nose against David’s, he’d told him he was budgeting the wedding and David’s breath had stuck in his throat. Patrick had continued typing until he realized David hadn’t moved an inch.

“What is it?” he’d asked, turning to face him with a line forming between his brows.

David had pressed his lips together tightly, looking at the spreadsheet laid out on the screen before him, itemized and color-coded. And then he’d looked at Patrick, who was rumpled from sleep and blinking at him slowly, waiting for David to be ready to explain. “It’s just…” he had started. “It feels more real now.”

The words had come out choked and Patrick had noticed, because he had put the laptop aside and tilted David’s chin upward so he could kiss him properly, and then they’d forgotten about the budget.

David has markedly less romantic ideas about the budget now that Patrick has taken to rejecting some of his better, albeit more expensive, ideas. Even with Patrick’s carefully set rules around spending, he can tell that Patrick is interested and invested in planning; he likes it, _enjoys_ it, and it makes David want to dissolve into a pool of sickly sweet syrup. He just wishes Marcy could see that; that Patrick would let her see it.

So he opens his weekly text from Marcy to ideas for the rehearsal dinner. She wants to put together a collage of their baby pictures and wants to know what he thinks. Her last text tells him that it’s okay if he doesn’t like the idea, she just thought she might suggest it, and David doesn’t have trouble wondering why Patrick turned out the way he did.

He watches as Patrick reaches into the cabinet for coffee grounds, his threadbare tee riding up as he takes them off the shelf and sets out two mugs. He bites back a smile and turns back to his phone.

A part of him badly wants to say a collage of their baby pictures is clichéd, that the rehearsal dinner is going for a much more elegant and refined vibe, but then he remembers that it’s going to be at the café and he remembers he’s talking to his future mother-in-law and if he’s learned to compromise for Patrick, he can learn to compromise for her.

So he texts her back that he loves the idea, perhaps a little over-enthusiastically, but she replies that she’s excited he likes the idea as if four exclamation points wasn’t an excessive response.

And then Marcy texts him four baby photos of Patrick, one right after the other, as if that’s just something she can _do_ without sending David to the hospital. The first is Patrick sitting in the grass with his dad lying on his side next to him. He has an overly large baseball hat on his head and is brandishing a whiffle ball bat that’s four times as long as he is. David lets out a noise, his hand flying to his mouth.

A very adult version of the two-year-old in the photo turns around, frowning.

“Stevie sent me a video of someone throwing cheese at a cat,” David tells him and Patrick snorts before turning back to the coffee.

After that, David manages to keep his reactions to a minimum, grinning behind a hand as he looks at pictures of Patrick in his mother’s arms at the hospital, Patrick in his first little league uniform, Patrick on his first day of school wearing yellow rain boots and a red raincoat. He texts Marcy to send more and she does. Patrick ages slowly in them; Patrick at his middle school graduation, then high school, then college. He has a mop of reddish-brown curls in high school that makes David want to make him grow out his hair so he can sink his hands into it.

 _Oh! I can’t believe I forgot this one,_  Marcy texts and then there’s a long pause before she sends a photo of Patrick in a red polo. He has curly hair again and David taps on it so he can zoom in. The polo has a logo on it and David squints at it before he has to swallow a triumphant noise.

Patrick is in his Rose Video uniform. It must be his first day of work at the store because he looks impossibly young and proud; the curls make him look softer, and there’s a fullness to his cheeks that has since faded. David saves it to his phone and thanks Marcy, promising that he’ll scrounge up his own baby photos—they’ll be carefully curated because he knows for a fact there are photos of him in a high chair stuffing his face with Cheerios and he refuses to have _that_ at his rehearsal dinner.

She sends him a heart and tells him to tell Patrick that they say hi, asks him to call them sometime soon. Patrick is crawling back into bed, pressing a cup of coffee into David’s hands and jutting his chin at David’s phone. “Everything okay?” he asks.

“Everything’s _great_ ,” David says, because it _is_. Patrick is bringing him coffee in bed and they have hours before they have to be anywhere, and the place they have to be is a _cake_ tasting and he has photos of Patrick’s childhood on his phone. “Your mom says hi.”

One of Patrick’s eyebrows arches upward. “Oh?”

David nods and lets his grin loose, lips stretching wide behind the rim of his mug. “Mmmh, she has some _very_ good ideas for the rehearsal dinner.”

“…Okay?” Patrick squints at him, looking suspicious.

“In fact, we've already started planning it.” David reaches for his phone, unlocking it and pulling up the photos. “She wants to do a collage of baby photos. And based on what she’s already sent me, I _wholeheartedly_ agree.”

Patrick is looking at him like he can’t quite decide if David is being serious, so David passes him his phone and Patrick goes a little pale. “She didn’t.”

“Oh, she did,” says David, gleeful. “She really did.”

Patrick is shaking his head as he thumbs through the pictures, the tips of his ears tinged pink. It’s almost as cute as the pictures, David thinks as he watches him. “We have to have a talk about how often you text my mom,” Patrick says, handing the phone back.

David takes it and glances down at the screen, where a teenaged Patrick is smiling at the camera in his Rose Video uniform. “Your mom and I are good friends now, you can’t stop that.” He studies that photo more carefully before turning the screen so Patrick can see. “I think this one is my favorite.”

“Can’t guess why.”

“You know who’d love it more?”

“David…”

“My dad.”

“David, if you show that photo to your dad, I’m calling off the wedding,” Patrick says, grabbing at the phone. David dodges easily. “The last time he asked me about Rose Video he spent an hour talking about late fees.”

“Look how _proud_ you are!” David crows, lifting the phone out of reach. Patrick is half on top of him now, laughing as he reaches for the phone. “In your cute little uniform. Do you still have it? I bet you do.”

“I don’t, I burned it ages ago,” Patrick says, deadpan.

“That is such a shame,” David says, dropping his phone to the bed and setting down his coffee so he can loop his arms around Patrick and pull him into a proper morning kiss. Patrick complies easily, settling into David’s arms and curving into him. It’s instinctual now, the way Patrick responds to David’s touch, his body pressing closer without any conscious thought, warm and soft and pliant.

He pulls away too soon, looking thoughtful. “That gets me thinking, you know,” says Patrick. David frowns at him, knowing he looks irritated to have been interrupted. “About the first time I saw you.”

David feels dazed from the early hour and from Patrick’s more than a little distracting kisses, so he just looks at Patrick blankly, wondering when they ever started talking about the first time they met.

“What was it that your mom said in those videos? ‘In case of a fire, an authority figure is not always accessible to usher you and your customers to refuge. If you absolutely must take flight, do not dismay. Remain calm and in control of your faculties as you are escorted to safety.’ It was more of a vocabulary lesson than a training video on fire safety.”  

“ _No._ ”

Patrick looks too self-satisfied for his own good and David extracts himself from his arms. He’s angling to really rile David up and it’s working. “Am I remembering the video correctly? We had to watch it so many times during orientation every year.”

He _is_ remembering it correctly because David himself remembers the video well. He remembers their dad dragging him and Alexis to work, telling them it would be a bonding experience, except the lights were too bright and David flubbed his lines one too many times. He had been fifteen, playing a customer that panics in a fire, and Alexis was eleven. She had gotten to play the cool and composed customer while he had to pretend his panic was because of an invented fire and not the way the makeup itched or how his glasses kept sliding down his nose.

“I _asked_ to be one of the examples of a calm customer, but my mother told me I didn’t have the temperament,” David tells him and Patrick chuckles. David would hate it so much more if Patrick wasn’t lit up inside because of it, looking delighted at the memory.

“I thought it was adorable.”

“You and I have very different definitions of the word adorable.” David tilts his head to the side and frowns. “Mortifying? Absurd? Something I’d rather forget? Not adorable.”

Patrick shrugs, looking all too amused. “I think adorable is the word I was looking for,” he says and David lets him lean in to steal a kiss.

Patrick lets him forget about it for the rest of the day until they’re getting out of the car and walking up to a bakery in Elmdale for their cake tasting; somehow, in some strange, cosmic turn of events, David is the one to bring it up.

“So when you said adorable…” he says, lacing his fingers through Patrick’s when he comes around the other side of the car. Patrick is looking at him quizzically, so David pushes a bit more. “Did fifteen-year-old Patrick think I was adorable too?”

Patrick gives him a long look and it’s one that David recognizes. He doesn’t need to say what he says next for David to hear it. “David. We’re not doing this.”

“No, you just said I was adorable, I’m wondering if you always thought that,” he says, biting the inside of his cheek. Patrick opens the door to the bakery for him, shaking his head. “How would a teenaged Patrick feel if he found out he was marrying David Rose?”

Patrick pauses as they approach the counter, waiting for someone to serve them. “Considering I had a crush on Javy Lopez I didn't want to admit, I’d say I’d be pretty shocked,” he says, tapping his fingers against the counter and looking around the bakery.

“Yeah, I don’t know who that is?” Patrick lets out a low chuckle, shaking his head; he knows perfectly well that David knows who he is, remembers vividly Patrick’s list of baseball players he paid a little too much attention to as a teenager. David wants Patrick to turn towards him so he can put his hands on his shoulders and look him in the eye, though he’s not really sure why; Patrick is just as good at withholding things like this from David when they make eye contact.

He wants to press Patrick for more, wants to round out this image he has in his mind of a young Patrick watching videos of the Rose family at work, but one of the bakers greets them and Patrick is giving her their names. She guides them over to one of the free tables and says they’ll be out in a few minutes with sample slices and David taps his foot under the table.

“David.” Patrick reaches across the table to take David’s hand in his. David perks up. Patrick is going to rub soothing circles across the back of his hand and say nice things and then they’ll eat cake and get tipsy at their wine tasting. But what Patrick says is, “I can promise you that I’m not going to tell you if I had a crush on you in high school.”

“Yeah, umm, for that? You have no say in the cake decision,” David says just as the woman from earlier brings back a tray with six slices of cake on it. She sets down two forks on the table and points to each cake, describing them in detail, telling them about costs. Patrick listens intently and nods along, even as David tries to play footsie with him under the table. The woman is sweet and her bakery smells like heaven but David wants her to go away.

When she does, he snatches Patrick’s fork away from him. “ _Really_?” Patrick asks, shoulders sagging.

David just shrugs, so Patrick gets up and walks over to the counter. He asks for another fork and the slightly confused baker gives it to him. He sends David a smirk as he sits down, taking a bite of the red velvet. “Fine, you can taste the cake, but I make the decision.”

“Okay, David.”

They end up eating all the slices on the table, then asking for more and eating all of those too. Patrick likes the red velvet and the lemon, but David ate almost all of the dark chocolate and is contemplating asking for more.

“I’m just saying if people are going to be eating a lot and drinking champagne, something as rich as dark chocolate might not be the best idea.” Patrick has leaned back in his chair, looking markedly sleepier than he had when they walked in.

“And _I’m_ saying that there is no such thing as too much rich food.”

Patrick looks at him in that way he does when he knows David knows he’s being ridiculous and he just wants him to admit it. “We can do the dark chocolate if you really want, but I think the red velvet works better with the buttercream.”

David has a response at the ready for that, but it dissolves on his tongue. He can’t help but look at Patrick in that way he does when Patrick just _is_ and it feels like everything. He’s debating cake flavors and frosting choices like it’s the most natural thing in the world; like it’s what he wants to be doing most in the world. And, David realizes slowly, that’s because it is. There really isn't anywhere else that Patrick would rather be right now. He feels his throat tighten when Patrick looks up at him, noticing how David has gone quiet. His brow knits into a curious frown, head tilted to the side, silently asking David what he’s thinking, so David reaches across the table like Patrick did an hour ago and grips his hand tight.

“I love you,” he says just under his breath. Patrick’s face melts into something soft, the wrinkle in his forehead disappearing.

“I love you, too,” he says back. It’s quick and instinctual but no less full of meaning. And then Patrick’s lips twitch and he says, “Does this mean we can get the lemon?”

“Absolutely not.”

They don’t have to decide just yet, so Patrick goes to the counter to discuss pricing and a time frame. He comes back with a coffee cup and slides the espresso to David wordlessly, glancing at his phone as he does so to check emails from vendors, probably.

David watches him over the lid of the cup, watches the way his mouth tightens in concentration, the way his fingers hover over his phone screen as he thinks about how to respond, because Patrick thinks deeply about the contents of his emails before he writes them down. Patrick also does things like getting him this espresso without having to ask because he knows David feels bloated and sleepy after cake and the espresso wakes him up and helps him digest. He holds open the door to the bakery for David and takes his free hand in his. The car is ten feet away but it’s an instinct to latch onto him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Lucy who makes tapenade and pesto for the store and is catering the wedding had called David last week to ask if he wanted to go over the menu so they could do wine pairings and David had had to put the phone down. Patrick had thought something was wrong, so he’d put down his coffee and newspaper and waited for David to collect himself. “She wants to do _wine pairings_ ,” David had said and Patrick had asked if that was a bad thing. David had thought he was serious, so he’d put the phone back to his ear and left the kitchen.

So that’s where they are now, walking up to Lucy’s garage that she’s converted into a professional kitchen. There’s an island in the middle with three stools around it, one on one side and two on the other with two wine glasses set out beside two printed menus. David turns to Patrick and mouths _Menus_ behind a hand, looking gleeful.

He can’t take his eyes off of them, letting his finger trace the loopy handwriting at the top that reads _Brewer-Rose Wedding_ as Patrick makes small talk with Lucy.

Lucy has picked out three whites and three reds and before she can start describing the reds, Patrick goes, “I actually think we’re going to go with a white for the reception.” David twists his lips into a half smile. “We’re worried about spilling and stains.”

“What with all the people moving around and all,” David adds and Patrick looks at him, nods, and looks back to Lucy who starts telling them about base notes and grape varieties.

Patrick is letting David do the lion share of the creative decisions in all the planning and David is letting him do the logistics, and after a few false starts, screaming matches with his mother about boundaries, arguments over FaceTime with Alexis, and Patrick strictly dividing up planning duties across the whole family, they’ve settled into a rhythm that is markedly less likely to give David hives or close up his throat. He finds himself liking the routine they’ve settled into, the neat organization of it all; he thinks without it he’d never leave the apartment, lying in bed in a low-grade panic for months.

But, he thinks as Lucy pours them a glass from the next bottle, there’s something about sitting beside Patrick and doing it together; Patrick who likes plain frames, spreadsheets, and label makers, who finds them more fascinating than mid-century modern furniture, Tom Ford suits, and postmodernist experimental performance art. But he’s sitting here beside David and contributing to the creative decisions and none of it feels forced or like he’s trying too hard or bored out of his wits.

David loves Patrick quietly, with reassuring touches and unconditional support. He loves him when he puts on rubber gloves to wash the dishes, loves him when puts old baseball games on in the background as he works on the couch, loves him when he lets out soft, comfortable noises into David’s neck when he wakes up in the morning. He loves him when he wants to yell at him, he loves him when he wants to wring his neck so he can stop teasing him for thirty seconds and be serious, and he loves him when he gives David long looks with hints of judgment when David does things like refuse to clean the hair out of the shower drain.

And he loves him when he sits beside him at a wine tasting for their wedding, carefully considering the options, asking David which he likes, and only making four cutting remarks about tannins and wine regions in France.

Lucy is telling them about the next bottle and Patrick is listening closely which means David has to keep his mouth shut; all he can do is put his hand on Patrick’s knee with just enough pressure for Patrick to know it has meaning. Maybe if he just put his hand there lightly, absentmindedly, Patrick would have kept on listening and David would just wait until later to press an _I love you_ into his neck outside; but Patrick does notice.

He glances at David, first out of the corner of his eye, then fully. He’s not sure if Patrick _gets_ it, understands what he’s saying. David wants him to know it exactly; he wants there to be no question that Patrick is hearing him.

Patrick’s hand moves from where it’s holding the stem of the wine glass to rest over David’s on his knee, steady and knowing. It stays there for the rest of the wine tasting, and then slots easily into David’s when they stand. Lucy presses the remainder of the bottle they liked into his hand, tells them it’s on the house, and they talk pricing; David can tell Patrick is imagining his spreadsheet and wishes he had a free hand to press over his mouth to hide his grin.

Patrick holds his hand the whole walk home.

And later, when they’re curled up in bed, still tipsy from the tasting and the samples of brandy Lucy plied them with, David drags his fingers up the back of Patrick’s neck and along his scalp. Patrick’s eyes blink slowly once, then twice and then stay closed as he lets out a hum against David. “Your hair is so short,” David remarks, voice low and contemplative.

His eyes feel heavy and it’s just a throwaway comment; he’s thinking of that picture of Patrick in his uniform and how his curls brushed his ears. He wonders if it ever got long enough that Patrick would have to brush them out of his eyes and he lets himself imagine a teenaged Patrick pushing back his hair, Marcy fiddling with it and asking why he wouldn’t just cut it. Marcy was the type of mom to say it hid his beautiful face; Patrick would blush and push her away and go up to his room in this imagining.

“Is it?” Patrick mutters, eyes opening to look up at David. “I hadn’t really noticed.”

David trails his fingers down Patrick’s back, then back up again to trace circles across his collarbone absentmindedly. His lips curl into a smile. “Maybe it’s just in comparison to that photo of you.”

Patrick looks more awake now, pushing himself out of David’s arms so he can rest on his elbow facing him. He narrows his eyes at David. “What are you angling for?”

“Nothing!” It comes out more defensive than he’d like. “It’s just nice to have pictures of you.”

“You’ve seen pictures of me before.” Patrick is right; David was the one to pull the albums from the shelf when they visited his parents. Patrick’s curious look turns playful. “Maybe you just liked the uniform.” David pulls a face, so pronounced that Patrick chuckles and says, “Okay, maybe not.”

“It’s not like I have the best memories of Rose Video,” he says, then wishes he hadn’t because now Patrick is going to bring up the training videos again and the more he talks about it, the likelihood of him finding them and sending them to Stevie skyrockets.

“It’s not like I had the best memories of that time, either,” Patrick says, surprising him. David goes quiet because Patrick is playing with the sheet pooled at his hips and looking thoughtful. Finally, he looks back up at David and says, “I’m glad you’re talking with my mom.”

It’s not teasing or sarcastic, instead so genuine David’s heart feels ready to burst from his ribs.

“I’m glad we can have this.” He gestures between them and David know he doesn’t mean _this_ specifically, but instead all of it; he can have a fiancé he loves like this and David can talk to his mom about their wedding without Patrick feeling sick. He knows what that means to Patrick.

Even so, there’s still a space between them that needs to be breached.

It’s David’s turn to play with the hem of the sheet, biting the inside of his cheek. “You can talk to her too, you know,” he says finally, unable to look back up at Patrick just yet.

When he finally does, Patrick is looking at him with a knit brow. “I know that,” he says.

“Do you?” David asks and he thinks maybe he shouldn’t push it, maybe he should let Patrick get there on his own. But then Patrick’s expression goes reflective. “She um,” David starts, then breaks off, thinking hard. “I think she’s really excited? And I think she can’t tell how excited you are.”

David doesn’t know where this is coming from. He and Marcy don’t talk about things like this. But sometimes, Patrick will be getting lunch and David will be alone at the store; Marcy will call and she’ll be looking for David. She’ll have a question about the wedding, about some logistical thing with it all, or a suggestion about centerpieces, and when Patrick comes back, the subject is changed so slowly and subtly David doesn’t even realize until later.

Patrick is chewing on his lip and trying not to pick at his cuticles, David can tell. “I’m just saying,” David says, grabbing onto one of Patrick's hands and interlacing their fingers together, “I think she might want to talk about it with you but I don’t think she knows how. Yet. I think. I don’t know.”

He’s still thinking hard, his grip tight on David’s hand. And then finally: “I don’t know how to talk to her about it.” David nods and stays quiet because that’s what Patrick needs right now. “I uh. I want to include her in this stuff, I do. I think it’s easier for her to talk about it with you. I just…” He breaks off, then tries again. “I think she feels guilty. About the last time. About Rachel. And I don’t want her to feel guilty because I didn’t say anything about how nothing felt right. I just want to focus on us. You and me, getting married.”

It’s one of the many things Patrick has said that makes David’s eyes sting. “I want that too,” David tells him because he does. “But um? I think I also need us to talk about the past? And to like, talk to your parents about this stuff.”

Patrick’s thumb is circling across the back of David’s hand, slow and instinctual. “Yeah,” he says finally. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“I mean, I’m always right, so…” David says and Patrick cracks a smile. “I’m not sure we need the clarification.”

Patrick lets the comment slide, giving David’s hand one last squeeze before trailing it up his arm so he’s cupping his neck, thumb brushing across his jaw. “Thank you.” The words are almost inaudible, but it doesn’t matter anyway because Patrick is pressing his gratitude against his lips.

David lets Patrick kiss him, curving into him like instinct, letting himself get lost in the way it feels to have Patrick kiss him like this, open-mouthed and full of something like an inevitability. It isn’t until Patrick hitches a leg over David’s, his kisses becoming hot and full of intention, that David extracts himself.

“It’s just—” He breaks off, unsure of what to say. Patrick untangles their limbs and waits for him patiently, blinking away the jarring transition. “I don’t want these things to um. Be separate. Like, me and your parents and the wedding.” Patrick looks like he’s going to say something but David keeps going. “You don’t _have_ to tell me if you had a crush on me in high school."

Patrick cracks a smile, clearly holding back at least six different comments.

“And I know we’ve like, already talked about all that stuff.” David gestures as he speaks, as if he can encapsulate crushes on baseball teammates, Rachel, and college boys Patrick didn’t let himself pursue. “And it’s not about me thinking you’re not excited, because it _really_ isn’t. It just sort of like? I know it’s complicated, like weddings specifically, with your parents. I _know_ that but I want you to be able to talk about our wedding with them. I want that for you. Because you didn’t get it before, for _obvious_ reasons. Plus, you need someone to talk about it with other than Alexis and my mother.”

“Are you implying they’ve been less than ideal wedding planners?”

“Nice deflection.” David kisses him on the nose, delighting in the way Patrick flushes red at being caught. “Does that make sense to you though?”

“Yes.” Patrick is emphatic. “I think I got really used to hiding things from them. I think I was doing it for a lot longer than I was conscious of it. So it became a habit. But, David, it’s a habit I’m trying to break.”

David smiles at him, rubbing comforting circles into Patrick’s hip with his thumb. “I know. And I know it’s _hard_. I don’t, like expect you to flip a switch and be better about talking about it. That would be ridiculous.”

“I can make an effort, though,” Patrick says, looking thoughtful. “I promise I’ll make an effort.”

David believes him. He trusts him straight down to his core, which used to scare him more than it does now. He knows there are going to be promises they break down the line, know that it’s unavoidable; but he also knows that it won’t ever be the big ones. It won’t ever be the ones Patrick makes while lying in bed, wide earnest eyes meeting David’s as he says the words, the ones that feel weighty between them, like they’re both holding something fragile that they won’t ever drop.

The next day, they’ll open the store and have dinner with Alexis and his parents, and they’ll decide on a cake flavor and maybe Marcy will call and maybe Patrick will talk to her about the wedding; tell her about the wines they’ve picked, the centerpieces Moira wants for them, or maybe the vows Patrick thinks he’s kept a secret from David; maybe Marcy’s voice will do the same thing Patrick’s does when he’s excited about something and Patrick will smile into his phone; maybe Patrick will continue to thread this all together.

But for now, David is going to kiss Patrick slowly, unhurried and deliberate, feel Patrick relax next to him, and listen to his breath even out, and David will think about doing this for the rest of their lives.


End file.
